Erin Belieu will be reading downtown at the Northwind Arts Center at 7 pm. If you’re in the Port Townsend area, come by!

This reading is the public capstone of the sold-out April Poetry Symposium, happening at the Fort Worden State Park campus April 14-17.

Erin, the Artistic Director for the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, is the author of three collections of poetry.

Her first book, “Infanta,” was a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Hayden Carruth. “Infanta” was also chosen as a best book of the year by The Washington Post and Library Journal.

Her second collection, “One Above & One Below,” was the winner of the Midland Authors Prize in poetry and the Ohioana prize.

Her most recent collection, “Black Box,” was a finalist in 2007 for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is presently Director of The Graduate Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.

Belieu is also the coeditor of The Extraordinary Tide, an anthology published by Columbia University Press that features the work of contemporary American women poets.

She has worked extensively in literary publishing and was previously the managing and poetry editor for AGNI magazine, as well as the founding editor of Hotel Amerika.

In addition to her writing, editing, and teacher, Erin Belieu is the co-founder and co-director of VIDA, a literary organization that seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities.

Since 1974, writers have come to Centrum to immerse themselves in the writing life and make breakthroughs in their personal work.

The Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, located at the heart of the thriving Pacific Northwest literary scene, is Centrum’s flagship literary program. The Conference, happening the week of July 17-24, is a place to soak in writing for a week with great literary writers and teachers.